These measures constitute the steps of the ladder up which Gen. Wu Pei-fu will climb to emerge as Provisional President of China, the head of a federal government which will exercise nominal jurisdiction over the several local regimes the Japanese have established or intend soon to establish.
No Chinese the writer has met who has been in contact with Gen. Wu in recent years suggests that he can be anything more than nominal as well as provisional president. Indeed, had he been otherwise he might not have been a candidate for high Japanese political honours.
Gen, Wu is now 60 years of age. His most active period in Chinese affairs was between 1923 and 1927. In 1923, under Tsao Kun, he wa: chief military figure in North China, commanded the Chihli forces in the Chihli-Fengtien war of 1924 (when Te was defeated through the defect tion of Gen. Feng Vu-hsiang). Later he joined with his former enemy Chang Tso-lin to defeat Feng in 1926. In the following year he suffered irretrievable defeat at the hands of ihe army under Gen. Chiang Kaishek at Wuchang.
After this he wisely went into retirement in Szechuen province and Jived there some years, his chief interest Buddhist, painting and poetry until the winter of 1931-32 when he transferred his residence to Peiping and has lived here in retirement since then. He is described as a man much older than his years.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.